page_title: Roman Renaissance
section_title: Leo X
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Renaissance / Leo X
context_page_description: The Renaissance in Rome occupied a period from the mid-15th to the mid-16th centuries, a period which spawned such masters as Michelangelo and Raphael, who left an indelible mark on Western figurative art. The city had been a magnet for artists wishing to study its classical ruins since the early 1400s. A revived interest in the Classics brought about the first archaeological study of Roman remains by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello. This inspired a corresponding classicism in painting and sculpture, which manifested itself in the paintings of Masaccio and Uccello. Pisanello and his assistants also frequently took inspiration from ancient remains, but their approach was essentially cataloguing, acquiring a repertoire of models to be exploited later.
  In the year 1420, Pope Martin V moved the papal seat back to Rome, following its long "Babylonian captivity", and after the Papal Schism, when several "popes" simultaneously claimed the office. He at once set to work, establishing order and restoring the dilapidated churches, palaces, bridges, and other public structures.
context_section_description: Leo X was a lover and patron of the arts and sciences, and probably did more than any pope to establish Rome as
  the centre of European culture. He had San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, on the Via Giulia, built, after designs by Jacopo Sansovino and pressed forward on the reconstruction of St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican under Raphael and Agostino Chigi. 
  He encouraged painting in particular, and Raphael benefitted enormously under his patronage.
  "Everything pertaining to art the pope turns over to Raphael", wrote an ambassador in 1518. He finished the decoration of the Stanze begun under Julius II, even referring to Leo X in some of the scenes. He painted the cartoons for the tapestries of the Sistine Chapel, which represent scenes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul, the most magnificent of them being St. Peter's miraculous draught of fishes and St. Paul preaching in Athens A third famous enterprise was the decoration of the Vatican Loggia done by Raphael's pupils under his direction, and mostly from his designs. The most exquisite of his paintings are the Sistine Madonna and the Transfiguration.
  Sculpture was not as favored under Leo X as painting, and while Michelangelo worked on a marble façade for the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, he did not finish it. The greatest and most difficult task was the continuation of the new St. Peter's. Bramante remained its chief architect until his death in 1514. Raphael succeeded him, but in his six years of office little was done, much to his regret, through lack of means. 
  Leo X has spent all the money carefully saved by his predecessor Julius II. He sold indulgences to help pay for it, a mistake which led to the Reformation.
caption: The Raphael Cartoons: The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
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